Malnutrition is dangerous for the lives of over 51 million children worldwide: now with an “App” a photo is enough to diagnose it

ROME – Mobile phones are by now an almost natural extension of human beings and it can be said with good reason that now wherever you are, anyone who owns one or, at worst, knows someone who does. Starting from this simple reflection Action Against Hunger developed in November 2015, within the research and development program, an app to be able to carry out both accurate and rapid screening of the SAM (severe acute malnutrition). Acute malnutrition is, in fact, a life-threatening reality for more than 51 million children globally and, despite progress, it remains a significant problem in developing countries: around 45 per cent of the mortality of girls and boys under the age of 5 is attributed to malnutrition and when this does not lead to death, it makes children vulnerable and compromises their physical and intellectual development.

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828 million people who suffered from hunger in 2022. The Covid-19 pandemic then further exacerbated the problem, with 118 million more people going hungry in 2020, bringing the total to around 828 million (UN Source). And although treatments against malnutrition exist and are also effective and efficient, 3 out of 4 girls and boys with the most severe forms of malnutrition still do not have access to treatments, due to the scarce capillarity of health centres, especially in the more rural areas. isolated, costs and the inability to reach them due to wars and conflicts. Similarly, management and screening processes are often inefficient and require cumbersome equipment or high technical skills. Hence the natural difficulty due to which coverage is often limited for the most remote areas, as in the case of rural areas of Senegal, where the app has been successfully tested.

Geometric morphometry at the service of medical science. Using morphology, the study of forms, through a photo of the arm of a boy or girl (between 6 and 59 months), it is possible SAM APP to compare the parameters with those of a healthy child, determining if the child suffers from malnutrition. The app was obviously developed as open source, free and can detect cases of SAM in real time, even without an Internet connection. Diagnosing is thus faster and easier than existing methods, making it ideal for use at a community level. It can be used by health professionals who interface with local families, the application integrates with the health system, allowing the sharing of nutritional data, in order to be able to make more informed decisions regarding diagnoses and subsequent referral of patients to more suitable structures. The technique used is that of geometric morphometry, which makes it possible to compare the shape of organisms from an image, without having to detect its dimensions.

Diffusion: from the Sahel to the UNHCR refugee camps. In fact, morphometry identifies anatomical reference points, homologous in all individuals such as the navel or knees, and in comparing the distance between these points for each of the individuals studied, it quantifies the morphological differences based on the factor to be analysed. In this case the nutritional status. To visualize these differences, simply connect the dots creating the geometric shapes that best describe the shape of the structure we want to visualize. A simple, effective, replicable and immediate system which, after the pre-scaling-up phase, is experiencing a large-scale diffusion starting this year, including the extension of use in the Sahel countries, all ‘use in refugee camps together with’UNHCR. A success, that of SAM APP which was possible thanks to a shared work carried out by the many project partners, including the Complutense University of Madrid, theCheick Anta Diop University of Dakar and the World Food Programme. To support the project Call Technologies for Sustainable Development 2021.